Friday, September 30, 2005

ROME (Reuters) - Sony (6758.T) has apologized for an advertising campaign for its PlayStation game console which featured a young man wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan "Ten years of passion."

Some Catholics were outraged by the adverts, which ran in newspapers and magazines to celebrate the product's tenth anniversary. "This time they've gone too far," said Antonio Sciortino, editor of Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family), a mass-circulation Catholic weekly. "If this had concerned Islam there would have been a really strong reaction," Sciortino was quoted as saying in the Corriere della Seranewspaper.

Mr. Sciortino is actually wrong about really strong reaction if the ad had used Islamic references. Why? Because Sony never would have done it.

However, Sciortino is correct in noting the double standard. Can you just imagine the hue and cry if the person in the picture had been Mohammed? I am quite sure the Sony executives would have been marked for death and a fatwah issued against Sony (a typical over reaction by the Islamists who seem to revere Mohammed, a human, as some sort of deity). Christians, on the other hand, have to suffer the indignity of watching Jesus, who we hold to be God, held up to ridicule in some idiotic ad campaign for a video game.